Exclusive: Liberty Global CEO on studio consolidation, All3Media & streaming winners

LR: Mike Fries & Wade Davis

US studio consolidation will likely wittle down the number of streamers within three years as services find it increasingly tough to survive, according to Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries.

The exec, speaking to TBI at SeriesFest in Denver, said the number of streamers would decline as smaller players found it hard to “maintain momentum”.

“There will be a handful of really comprehensive destinations for viewers, Disney and Netflix and WBD will be among them.

“Consolidation will come in various forms – platforms consolidating or studios consolidating, and then by definition platforms consolidating. I think within the next 36 months you’ll see some stuff happening.”

Streamers to be ‘swallowed up’

Fries had earlier held a fireside chat with TelevisaUnivision CEO Wade Davis, during which he predicted that smaller streamers would “get swallowed up” as competition for scale intensifies.

He pointed to the likes of AMC and Starz, whose parent Lionsgate is part-owned by Liberty, as companies that would find it difficult with “20 or 30 million subscribers rotating in and out.”

“It will be very hard for them to maintain momentum. They have great actors, producers and content but it will be really difficult.”

The Liberty Global CEO also talked up Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), which counts Liberty Media among its investors. Fries told TBI that CEO David Zaslav was “doing all the right things, focusing on cashflow, making sure expenses are the right size and that he has got his budget properly sized to his ambition.”

He added that content spending will likely be squeezed but said Liberty Global remains “happy” with UK-based production giant All3Media, which is owned by WBD and the telco.

“Everybody was chasing streaming scale and it turned out to be harder than they thought and that for sure is going to impact spending. But they are still spending a lot, Netflix is still going to spend $17bn, Disney spends $30bn, they are just changing the model a bit.”

Fries added that further aggregation would also occur as streamers seek audience, with viewers finding “platforms that will aggregate the apps like Amazon does and like we do, then there will be certain apps that have everything in them.”